


Flowers in the desert

by NightsMistress



Category: Radiant Historia
Genre: Post-Canon, explorations of the Granorg royal family, past references to Heiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are flowers in the desert, and Eruca must rebuild her country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowers in the desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cricket_aria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/gifts).



> Hi cricket_aria,
> 
> I read your prompt for this game while looking at something else and then _immediately_ set about looking for a let's play of it, as my sister had my 3DS and so I couldn't finish my playthrough of the game. I too now have a lot of feelings about the sad, complicated relationship between the Granorg royal family!
> 
> My thanks to samuraiter and Moontyger for the beta work.

_i._  
There are flowers growing in the desert: delicate little pink and white flowers that carpet the sands near Granorg Castle. Granorg has always been the first to be affected by the desertification, but it is also the first to see the restoration of the land. A recognition, perhaps, for the terrible price the royal family of Granorg has paid over the generations to keep the continent’s Mana in balance. The delicate desert blooms are a sight that fills the heart of Granorgites with hope, something they have had little of for so many years. As Eruca’s reign brought with it the end of the desertification, the people of Granorg hope that her reign will see an end to it entirely.

Eruca knows better.

The ritual was successful, the draining away of the land’s Mana has ceased. For now, at least, though her heart is heavy with the knowledge that another Granorg prince or princess will have to kill their sibling in the future. With the blossoming of flowers over what was once barren sand, Eruca knows that she had performed the ritual correctly.

Yet, her soul still feels incomplete; not the terrible sundering when Ernst died and was reborn with half of her soul, but the dull ache she has grown used to over the years. When she had gathered up the Sacrifice’s soul there had been so much pain and betrayal in it that she struggled to believe that it was truly Stocke. Stocke had been cool and aloof where Ernst was warm and charismatic, but they both loved dearly and intensely. He loved the world. Eruca had been sure of it.

It’s hard to believe that the angry, miserable soul that she had gathered up and used was Stocke. She remembers gasping at the festering hatred the soul had at its core, with a grim determination to see this through to save another. Stocke was quiet and listened more than he spoke, but Eruca thought she would have known if he was harbouring this kind of fury in their soul. And yet, the soul had to have been Stocke’s. The flowers are growing in the desert. The farms are arable once more. Granorg is no longer brought to its knees by the threat of starvation.

She wonders still, was it truly Stocke whose soul she gathered up that day?

“Enough of this,” she tells herself sternly each morning as she places her crown onto her golden curls. “He is gone and you cannot waste that sacrifice.”

She must accept this, and live on, for his sake.

 _ii._  
An Alistellian botanist comes to her kingdom one day, accompanied by a wagon of saplings, seeking a permit to plant them in her country’s desert. The saplings smell like Celestia, fresh green life and Mana, and Eruca breathes it in deep as she inspects its contents. She grants the permit and wonders if she is imagining seeing her brother’s hand in this, when she cannot see him at all in the slow reclamation of the desert. 

The land becomes greener as the season turns, and it is a regeneration that has no love for Eruca. The relationship between caster and Sacrifice is complex; the caster must look upon the pain of the past and not turn away, while the Sacrifice must grow their joint soul to encompass the continent. She is no shaman, and she cannot speak to the spirits like Aht can. But Eruca is sure that the land begrudgingly accepts her, and any affection it holds towards her is from a time long past. It is a strange feeling, and that and the ache in her soul makes her wonder whether she should ride to Celestia and speak with Aht.

Instead, Eruca rides to Alistel, where she makes peace with Alistel’s Slumbering Lion and their Valkyrie. Raul she knew from her journey with Stocke as a clever man with a mind that thought four steps ahead of where most would stop. Viola she knew only through reputation but she proved herself to be a woman of honour and integrity. Signing a peace treaty with Hugo would have damned her country to annihilation. As Eruca dipped the quill into the ink pot and signed her name under Raul and Viola’s, she thinks this peace might last until the desert rolls back in again. She dare not hope for more than that.

She reaches out to Garland, now that the war has ended, and formalises the alliance they had formed in Cygnus. He talks about having her fight in his arena much like Stocke to prove her country’s worth, which Eruca demurs to do for many reasons. Her rifle still fires true, and she has the magic abilities of one who opposed the ending of the world, but she thinks it would bring Granorg into disrepute if she were to fight like a common brawler. Stocke could do it and retain his dignity, but Eruca had the dignity of a country to maintain. She smiles as Garland signs under her name and thinks _with this, Granorg is now at peace with all of Vainqueur_.

It is an irony that Eruca’s peace efforts earn her enemies in her own city. Protea may have ordered that the city be put to the torch, and Dias may have been the one who lit the flames, but it is Eruca now who dodges the assassin’s bolts. She slips, once, and stumbles to her knees with a quarrel in her chest. She coughs blood onto a strange white platform she has never seen before, and lifts her head to see multiple sets of stairs spiralling up into the heavens. There is a black book by her knee and two young children on the platform above her. For all that they appear young, the way they look at her exposes an age-old pain.

Eruca recognises the book. She picks it up and pushes herself to her feet, gritting her teeth at the pain from her arrow wound. If she had been the Sacrifice like she was meant to have been, she would have endured pain like this over and again. Stocke would have endured this pain in her stead. She raises her chin and gazes steadily at the guardians of time.

“Is there a wielder of the White Chronicle?” she asks, and the children’s silence is her answer. “When he returns here, tell him his home is always waiting for him.”

This time around, she avoids the assassin’s arrows by vanishing out of sight. She must live on.

 _iii._  
It is not until the saplings from Celestia are at hip-height that Stocke returns to Granorg. He slips into her chambers under the cover of invisibility, but Eruca knows that he is there even before she sees the flash of his red coat as he becomes visible once again. It is not the first time that Stocke has come into her chambers unannounced and unseen by the guards.

“I’m sorry,” he says in way of greeting. “I meant to return sooner.”

“I could see your hand in … everything,” Eruca says. The botanist, arriving at just the right time to plant saplings that smelled of Celestia and bore Conuts as fruits. Raul and Viola being willing to treat with Granorg and Alistel being ready to sue for peace. Garland slapping her on the back and saying that Granorg’s debt to Cygnus had already been repaid. The Black Chronicle that she kept with her always. All of these could have only been brought about by the wielder of the White Chronicle, actively working to steer the course of history to one where the ritual is no longer necessary.

“I thought you would,” Stocke says. “You’ve got your own Chronicle, eh? I heard about you learning to Vanish.”

“I learned from you,” Eruca says. “I remember … you stopped Heiss killing me, when he travelled back in time to stop me ever meeting you. I saw it then, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”

“Clever, Eruca,” Stocke says, smiling crookedly. Ernst never smiled that way. Ernst would smile openly, his whole face lighting up like the golden prince Eruca always remembered him being. Stocke is more subdued; a quirk at the corner of his mouth, a light in his eye. He would tell the truth where Ernst would have lied to be kind.

“How long will you stay?” she asks. 

“A few days,” Stocke says. “Then I have to return to Alistel.”

Eruca doesn’t try to change Stocke’s mind. Ernst may have been the Crown Prince of Granorg, but Stocke is a soldier of Alistel, and they will always have his heart. If he remembered anything about being Ernst, it might have been more difficult for him, but Eruca is certain he does not. Both Stocke and Ernst could never walk away from someone in need, but Ernst wanted to fix everything with his own two hands. He dug ditches, erected signs, mended fences, and was genuinely liked but Eruca is learning that none of these things have anything to do with being the ruler of a country. Stocke is able to decide who to help, and who to direct others to help. Ernst made the people around him happy. Stocke is able to improve the lives of entire nations of people.

With that in mind, she cannot ask him to stay. She knows that he is leaving because he believes she can rebuild Granorg and that he does not have to do it for her. It is a terrifying idea: Granorg has been devastated by war, they are only now starting to produce enough food to claw themselves out of famine, and the royal family is not well loved by the people. But Stocke does not lie to her to be kind; if he thinks she can do it, then she can.

Eruca vows to live up to his expectations.

 _iv._  
The saplings reach Eruca’s chest when Stocke returns again. He has grown a beard that glints a ruddy gold, and Eruca’s breath catches. Their mother had had masses of strawberry blonde hair that cascaded down her back in ringlets, the same shade as Stocke’s beard. He grins wryly when he sees her.

“It’s not the disguise I would have chosen,” he says. “But it seems to work.”

He has been in Cygnus, her sources tell her, winning peace for Alistel there. Garland likes him, and she suspects that he would have had an easier job of it than anyone else in the country. Anyone else would have had to answer for Alistel’s turning Cygnus’ army to sand in a perversion of the ritual that kept the land intact, but Stocke had fought with them to repel the Alistellian forces. Also, he had fought in Garland’s arena, and that counted for a lot.

“I’m surprised I was the only one to recognise you as Ernst,” she says. “You look so much like our mother.”

“Ernst was a dead man,” Stocke says. “The dead don’t usually come back to life.”

There is, of course, one dead man who rests between them. Eruca has been thinking about Heiss lately. She remembers her uncle, though it had always been Ernst that was closer to him. Eruca remembers being envious of Ernst getting to go out of the castle with their uncle and see the outside world, and wanting to be old enough to go herself. She remembers him ruffling her blonde curls and saying that when she was old as Ernst was now, he would take her out too. The man she met later, whose soul she took in and cast out across the continent, hated her. That had hurt once she realised who he was, but time gave Eruca the perspective to understand despite the pain. He was a man who had run from his destiny to die at the hands of his brother, and Ernst had always been his favourite. It was little wonder that he looked at her and saw her father.

“Do you miss Heiss?” she asks Stocke.

He frowns in thought. “I think so,” he says finally. “But I think I miss what might have been more. I never thought of him as my uncle. When he made me into Stocke, he took that relationship away. He thought that ‘Stocke’ was a pseudonym, but for me, it was who I thought I was.”

“And now?”

Stocke shrugs. “To the world, I’m Stocke. To Historia, I’m Ernst.”

Eruca stares at him in surprise. It’s a name she never expected him to reclaim. He had been so clear at delineating himself from Ernst. “Why?”

“All of this,” he says, and gestures at the greenery that reclaims the desert that had once choked Granorg. “It’s only because of him deciding that a man named Ernst was someone he loved enough to die for. I thought it was the best way for him to be remembered.”

“I’m sure he appreciates it,” Eruca says, and means it. The Sacrifices are traditionally forgotten by history, though the caster never forgets. The relationship between caster and Sacrifice is complex and one defined by guilt and grief. Eruca did not know Heiss like Stocke did, but Heiss did not die for her sake. He died for Stocke’s, and so he assumes another burden that really should have fallen to her.

 _v._  
It is winter when Stocke visits again. The trees’ leaves have long fallen, and the wind is cold enough to cut through the warmest of coats. 

“A winter without snow,” he wonders as he steps inside the library. “In Alistel, the snow is six feet deep.”

Eruca looks up from her piles of books and paper and smiles wearily at him. The library remains warm and dry for the protection of the books inside, some dating back to the fall of the Empire, and Stocke has to remove his winter coat and gloves. He discards them on the table and sits down opposite her with a sigh.

He looks tired, bone weary, and she wonders where he has been. She has heard that he is involved in the reformation of Alistel now that the truth of Prophet Noah cannot be gainsaid, but she knows little more than that. Perhaps it’s best she doesn’t. She is, after all, the Queen of Granorg.

“I’m commissioning a book,” Eruca says. She has learned over the last few weeks that she has no skill as an author, and her research skills are rudimentary at best. “If the trees’ Mana production continues as it has done, then the ritual will no longer be necessary. It’s time … time that the Sacrifices are known to all.”

Stocke’s eyebrows raise. “Are you sure? This might be something you have to think about carefully.”

She understands his meaning; this might be a node of history and her decision may lead to a terrible future. It may be a future that she needs to avert, and in that aversion she ages faster than she should. Stocke already looks older than his twenty years. How out of sync will her own personal timeline become to history? It’s something she’s considered very deeply over the months.

“I know,” she says. “But I want to try. It is a terrible sin, and one that should be made public. It doesn’t matter if the world hates me for it, because you are here.”

“Yes,” Stocke says, and takes her hand. “I am.”

Eruca looks at his familiar face: the shaggy blond hair still damp from the snow outside, the long nose reddened by the cold, the quiet smile that he gives only to her. _Thank you,_ she thinks. _Thank you Heiss, for bringing my brother back to me._


End file.
